Archive for Second Life

All current outstanding requests for InWorldz OAR exports are complete.

In August of 2018, when the news came that InWorldz would shut down, I made a personal promise to the residents: I would do everything I could to ensure that any users who had any content rezzed in any region at shutdown time would be able to request, and be provided, a filtered OAR export archive of their content.

Now in July of 2019, after 11 months of near-continuous part-time efforts, I have completed the lengthy list of outstanding requests for OAR exports. Because the content was being taken off-grid, in order to respect the promises made to creators when they joined InWorldz, we needed to provide filtered OARs — only the content owned and created by a given user, or a “whitelist” of alts and collaborators providing their consent for export. This first required that a lot of specialized code be developed for the OAR loading process, and enhancements made to support not only the filtering aspects, but “drilling into” the Contents of rezzed objects, and the Contents of any objects nested within those objects.

It wasn’t just a matter of filtering objects with a subset of those in the region; when you’re looking 5 levels deep into the Contents of an object and 2 out of 5 of the Contents items are permitted for export, it means a new object must be created, and the other 3 Contents items must be replaced with placeholders — and then that new object must be substituted for the one referenced by (inserted back into) the object, which in many cases will trigger that object in the Contents list to be substituted as well, with another new object that has one or more Contents items replaced… all the way back up the parentage of objects to the one rezzed in the region. Also, most asset references needed to be checked and potentially scrubbed according to the whitelist of users. The code that scanned objects for asset IDs had no support for the newer InWorldz “Thoosa” asset storage, just the old OpenSim asset formats, and almost none of the code had support for Thoosa assets.

Just the coding itself was a tremendous amount of work, and if I had been aware of the effort required there is no way in hell I would have attempted it. I would have considered it far beyond that promise of “everything I could do” (reasonably). But I didn’t know that, dug in, and eventually completed the work anyway.

Then began the work of producing the actual filtered OAR export files for users.

Actually producing the OAR files was the easiest part. Trying to get information from users, such as a definitive lists of avatars to include, with authorizations from the email addresses that was used to register the accounts, and a list of specific region names, well that required a lot of user interaction. And interacting people slow down work tremendously. To date, it has required just under 900 email messages, often detailed and lengthy.

There was also the matter of user privacy. If “Joe User” collaborated with “Sally Avatar”, I couldn’t just provide the email addresses used to register those accounts to each of them and ask them to work it out. In many cases former project collaborators had no way to communicate, and I’d need to do that communication myself on behalf of the user requesting the OAR export, in order to protect those email addresses entrusted to InWorldz.

Even worse, I’d occasionally get an email with a confirmation of export authorization from what appeared to be the correct user, but not from the email address we had on file for that avatar account. So I could not accept such consent, and I could inform the user that it was the wrong email address, but for privacy reasons I could not provide the correct email even to that user.

Near the end I began sending a request for confirmation to the officially-registered email address in the hopes that it would reach the user and they could simply reply. But for those who moved on with email accounts, it was a battle between getting it done and privacy, and privacy was always paramount, especially since email addresses often revealed real-life identities behind the avatars.

If you would still like to receive an OAR export file:

I know some former InWorldz users are learning of all this process very late, so I’m still willing to provide OAR files for those who have missed out so far.

If you are still interested in a filtered OAR export of a former InWorldz region, please send a request to jim AT gridmail DOT org. The request should include:

the avatar name(s) of your account(s),

the avatar names of any creative collaborators who will confirm via email that I have their consent to include their content in an OAR export to you, and

the region name(s) of any regions where you had content rezzed when InWorldz was shut down in July.

Setting your OAR file expectations:

Please be aware that if you were not much of a creator of content, your OAR file will be heavily filtered. This means a lot of plywood boxes for things you purchased from other creators for use in InWorldz. That said, if there are third-party objects where you have your own content, for example a texture-changing photo frame where you added your own snapshots, the photo frame may be replaced by a box, but your snapshots would survive in the Contents of that box.

Also, an OAR export file is not really meant for end users. Second life has no knowledge of them, nor do any viewers (including Firestorm). OAR files are intended to be provided to grid owners for loading into an existing (empty) region on that grid. The only real exception to that, which isn’t really an exception, is if you are running your own Halcyon or OpenSim server (including Sim-on-a-Stick), you can do it yourself with the “load oar filename.oar” command. But there are many subtleties, including content Owner and Creator substitution that are best left to a knowledgeable grid owner. Also note: as far as I am aware, only TagGrid has a specialized process for attempting to preserve Creator info, other than the OAR owner, when loading an OAR file.

I entered SL near the end of 2006 and by the middle of 2007 I found myself and my partner at the time not only TPing home at the end of the day, but also hopping into bed when it was time to sleep in RL, and not logging out. When we slept in RL, we slept in SL. We were online 24 hours a day. There were often direct parallels between RL and our virtual selves.

The feeling of walking back to your computer in the morning when you woke, and seeing yourself still sleeping in-world, was very comforting. Warm fuzzies.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t particularly realistic or practical. If you were online 24 hours a day, and near the end of your first year of SL, you had quite a few friends (2007 was a VERY good year in SL) and many, like yourself, were still fairly new at it. You would end up confusing and frustrating them with your lack of response to IMs, etc. If you marked yourself offline to avoid that, you might find someone accusing you of “hiding” your online status from friends. But the worth part was if you woke the next day to find you had lost your connection, or your partner had, and when you do get to see yourself in-world, you find the bed’s now-empty ball has been taken by a newbie with an over-sized freenis. Eventually it was more trouble than positive so later in 2007, we both stopped doing that. However, I still have never lost the warm fuzzies you get when you log in and see a last-logoff pic of a nice goodbye. Especially if your partner is in the last logoff pic as well. It continues your new day from where the old one left off.

Canary mentioned one of my two favourite song-writing idols, Burt Bacharach (Jimmy Webb being the other). Bacharach’s song may take artistic license with a house not being a house without someone to share it with, but I will say the general sentiment is probably true in that it sure makes a home more of a home if you do have someone else in it. I have a place to genuinely call home in RL now, although it’s just me there. Still, that means there’s room for improvement.

I went to InWorldz because SL had become too expensive to remain creative there. Every single upload cost L$. Every prim counted. I was attracted by InWorldz’ higher limits and lower costs: 45,000 prims, at one quarter the SL cost, and never any upload fees. They were very friendly and supportive of content creators. My plan was to continue in SL as normal, but use InWorldz to make the home that I wanted in SL. A whole region to myself, 75% off. I could even disable Public Access if I wanted and never suffer the evil freenis ever again, because it was mine, all mine. And I could build and build and never have to think about prim limits. I could even build that dream home on the ground and have plenty of prims to build a city at 3000m in the sky. I could take 3 regions from SL and stack them in one InWorldz region. And at a cost of 75% off.

I still had a Premium account in SL, and 512 sqm parcel for my SL Exchange / Marketplace box. My plan was to do everything in SL, including TPing home to that small parcel, then log into InWorldz to experience an improved home like before bed time. Very much like what Canary described, but with the grids flipped.

That soon changed when more and more events started happening in InWorldz, and soon my friends list was far longer there than in SL. Also, as a software developer, I wanted to contribute and volunteered my bugfixing there for about 18 months before they grew large enough to actually hire me full-time. Now it’s a fairly high-pressure job (there’s only a few staff still, and lots and lots of users), but it is what I call my “dream job”. The founders there have the 2006 SL attitude: to enable everyone to live their dreams. It is really what I miss from the good years in SL. And in addition to that, they want to help make the world a better place. Using InWorldz to help kids in Africa, using it to help encourage users to exercise, use it to help support arts and charities, and to just plain encourage people to be creative and live their dreams. There are a lot of good people there. So I have found even more than a Home.

I definitely agree with what I think Canary’s article says or implies: a home is more than just a Home, and a Home can be a real home. I need to spend more time in mine!

This started as a simple one or two-line response in Sarge’s “Famous Quotes Updated for IW” thread in the InWorldz forums, but it kinda just didn’t stop growing, until I found a way out. 😉

ROMEO LINDEN:
“He jests at tattoo layers that never felt a bounce.”[JULIET RESIDENT appears above at a mesh window (not quite rezzed completely). ROMEO continues]
“But, soft! what windlight through yonder transparent prim breaks?
It is the X coordinates above 256.0, and Juliet Resident is the sun.
llSetBuoyancy above 1.0, fair sun, and derez the envious moon,
Who is already buggy and malfunctioning in JIRA,
That thou, her mentor, art wearing skin shade 1 while she is wearing skin shade 4.
Be not her mentor, since she is IMing me;
Her outfit is still her newb one and her hair is not prim
And none but fools would wear that; bald cap immediately!
She has a female avatar, O, I wish she would partner me!
O, that she were in chat range!
She animates typing, yet I see nothing in chat; what of that?
Her eyes are steady; but Show Look At will help.
I am too bold, ’tis not to me she speaks. I am out of chat range.
Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,
Her camera seems stuck, her eyes locked on the inside of her skybox
Star texture rotating in the sphere, again and again.
What if she changed her eye textures to stars, stars in her head?
The facelight on her cheek would shame those stars,
As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven
Would through the airy region stream so loud,
if only MP3Pro wasn’t selected by the DJ,
That breedables would sing and think she had hit Ctrl-Shift-Y.
See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand, her animation is a poor one.
O, that I were a glove upon that hand (worn on left hand),
That I might touch that cheek!”

JULIET
/me sighs.

ROMEO
“She speaks!
O, speak again, facelight angel! for thou art
As glorious to this night, having a higher Z coordinate than me
As is a winged avatar wearing a prim halo
My camera looks up, and my eyes have rotated to mostly white
And I think you might have hit ‘Fly’ accidentally
As I watch you drift into the lazy puffing clouds
And sail upon the bosom of the air. Press ‘F’ again!”

JULIET
“O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy last name and use a display name;
Or, if thou wilt not, partner me,
And I’ll no longer be a Resident.”

Recently, I have heard reports of InWorldz residents complaining that permissions seem to have become broken, or that objects that used to work no longer do. In addition to the dance ball rezzer products people buy “no longer working”, prefab home rezzers, furniture with MLP engines that rez balls, and other products can’t seem to rez the items they need to function.

Here’s an example. I received this message:

Hi ya Jim, do you have any idea what this error message means? My alt gets it when she tries to rez one of my products from its rezzer. Everything is set to Mod/Copy, permissions look good:

First, let me point out here that the permissions system in InWorldz is functioning properly and also that it is behaving exactly the same as Second Life™ in this regard.

In previous releases however, this was not the case. InWorldz did not properly check the permissions of objects rezzed by scripted objects. Now it does.

Also, with the latest release, there is a full implementation of parcel-based, region-wide prim limits. Thus the “or” in the error message above. There are two cases for failing to rez a prim from an object within a given parcel now: either the owner doesn’t have enough available prims in that region, or the object doing the rezzing does lacks the require permissions.

Here’s How To Fix It

The prim limit case is obvious enough, and can be checked by looking at About Land to see how many are available.

The more complicated case is rezzing permissions. The error, in this form, comes from an object: (product) in the example above. It’s trying to rez an object from its Contents, named (thing to rez) in the example above.

If that is being refused, something is not quite set correctly. Either:

– the land isn’t set to allow everyone to rez, or

– it’s set to allow object creation by group members, but the rezzer isn’t set to the correct group, or

– it’s not set to allow group object creation at all.

It’s actually pretty simple: to rez objects, you have to be the owner of the land (which in the case of group-deeded land would be a group-deeded object), or the object must be set to the correct group to match the land with object creation enabled for group members, or enabled for everyone. So:

Check About Land, looking particularly on the Options tab at the two “Create Objects:” checkboxes. It’s “normal” to have the first one unchecked (disabled for All Residents) and the second one checked (enabled, for group use).

Then if you want to enable group members to create objects, make sure that the land parcel has a group assigned (see the first tab on About Land).

Then make sure that the rezzer object has its group set to that group.

If you don’t enable object creation for either everyone or group members, then only the owner can rez objects. And that also means that if you have deeded the parcel to a group, then only group-deeded objects can rez other objects. (Because then the object’s owner (the group) is the same as the land (the group).)

Note that “normally” you do NOT have to deed objects to the group to allow them to rez other objects. You just need to set a land group, and enable rezzing for group members, then set the rezzer to that group. You only need the extra step of deeding the object if you have disabled object create for group members.